Dreams ... Every person, young and old, has a dream. She, like two-faced Janus, torments, torments, tears to pieces, and at the same time fills life with meaning. It is impossible to refuse it, but it is sometimes impossible to come close to it. The story of Leonid Andreev “Petka in the country” (a brief summary follows) tells exactly about such a dream ...
Free prison
A shout is heard in the hairdressing salon, jerky and loud: “Boy, water!” Petka, a boy of ten years, runs up to Osip Abramovich, a hairdresser, and stretches a can of hot water with thin, clumsy hands. Around the boring smell of cheap perfumes, flies, dirt. The visitor, as a rule, is undemanding: clerks, porters, workers, petty officials, old and young, clumsy dressed, with rosy cheeks and oily insolent eyes. Outside the window there are trees gray from dust, the same gray, uncooled shadows from them. Not far visible houses of "cheap debauchery." Men, women, strangely dressed, with evil, and often completely indifferent faces, are sitting on the benches. They drink vodka, laugh, speak in hoarse voices, hug, sometimes swear and even fight, which does not cause fear or pity, but on the contrary - general animation and fun ... Petka did not know whether he lived much in this way. An endless string of days and nights merged into one long unpleasant dream with constant cries: “Boy, water!”, With stretched stories of his friend Nikolka about drunken women and men, and with endless offerings of hot water, again and again ... Andreev's story "Petka in the country" does not end there.
Elusive dream
Continuing the story "Petka in the country", we return to the main character. Of all the employees at the hairdresser, Petka was the youngest. Once his mother, cook Nadezhda, gave the boy in apprentice to Osip Abramovich. Since then, he ate, slept and served there, in winter and summer, without days off and holidays, not knowing about other parts of the world, or even about other quarters and streets. From time to time, his mother visited him, brought treats and sweets. He ate idly, spoke little, did not complain, and only asked to be taken away from here. Where to? He himself did not know. He just wanted to go somewhere far away, to a completely different place. Really like. But what place should it be? And this was not familiar to him. Therefore, he quickly forgot about his request, languidly, detachedly said goodbye to his mother, not asking when she would come again. Petka did not know whether he was living badly at the hairdresser or well, bored or having fun, but with each new day he became thinner, covered with bad scabs, and spilled water more and more often. Visitors now and then with disgust looked at a dirty, freckled, thin boy who, with sharp wrinkles near his eyes and under his nose, looked more like an old dwarf.
Dacha
The story "Petka in the country", a brief summary of which is set forth in this article, does not end there. Once, at lunchtime, Nadezhda unexpectedly arrived and informed Petka that he and her would be allowed to stay at the dacha in Tsaritsyno, where her gentlemen live. The boy vaguely imagined what a summer cottage was, but inside he felt an inexplicable joy. What happened was what he dreamed about. He will go to the very place where he unconsciously sought. I wonder what it is? Station with its roar, hustle, hasty passengers; train carriage, vivid landscapes sweeping outside; endless brooding forest, clear, wide sky, which is impossible to see in the city; clearings, cheerful, bright, green - new impressions frightened, excited, and at the same time filled his soul with unprecedented delight. He looked and was afraid to miss, to lose the slightest detail of this new world for him.
Two days have passed. Petka, who had just been torn out of the “stone embraces of city communities”, pale, worried, frightening like a puppy, the blue surface of the lake, already felt at home in the country and completely forgot that there is a hairdresser, Osip Abramovich and the eternal cry: “Boy, waters ! ”He grew fat, although he ate very little. Unnoticed and somehow, wrinkles disappeared from his face, as if someone had walked over them with a hot iron. He learned to carve a fishing rod in a hazel, dig worms and fish.
Return to Reality: The End of a Dream
At the end of the story “Petka in the country,” a brief summary of which misses a lot of details, the master brings a letter from the city of Nadezhda: Osip Abramovich urgently calls Petka back to work. The cook burst into tears and went with a heavy heart to call for her son. Unsuspecting Petka was playing “classics” in the backyard. Mother’s words: “We must go, son!” - didn’t mean anything to him. He smiled and was surprised. For him, the city no longer existed, a hairdresser with split mirrors and the always displeased Osip Abramovich. They became ghosts for him, faceless phantoms, and the dacha, fishing rod and fishing planned for tomorrow became facts, his new reality. But gradually his thoughts began to clear up, and an amazing rearrangement took place: Osip Abramovich became herself an objective reality, a fact, and the fishing rod turned into a ghost. The boy did not just cry, but began to scream frantically, fell to the ground, and began to roll on the ground.
The next day, Petka went back to the city. And again the sharp one sounded: “Boy, water!” - and again sleepy, apathetic eyes did not see how hot water spilled here and there. And at night a quiet voice rang out, and Nikolka eagerly caught every word about the cottage, about something that no one had ever heard or seen, and peered into a small thin face, mottled with small wrinkles near his eyes and under his nose ...
Once again, I want to remind you that the story of Leonid Andreev is called "A Petka in the Country." The summary cannot convey the whole subtlety and depth of the feelings of the protagonist, so reading the work is simply necessary.